marijuana

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized pot legalization in recent remarks in Aspen. "This is one of the stupider things that’s happening across our country," said Bloomberg.

"Three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg harped on the importance of vocational education and blasted Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana as stupid Friday evening before a sold-out crowd at the Aspen Institute," reported the Aspen Times.

"When an audience member asked the 72-year-old Bloomberg about Colorado marijuana, he responded that it was a terrible idea, one that is hurting the developing minds of children. Though he admitted to smoking a joint in the 1960s, he said the drug is more accessible and more damaging today.

"'What are we going to say in 10 years when we see all these kids whose IQs are 5 and 10 points lower than they would have been?' he asked. 'I couldn’t feel more strongly about it, and my girlfriend says it’s no different than alcohol. It is different than alcohol. This is one of the stupider things that’s happening across our country.'"

For at least eight months in 2013 and 2014, letter carrier Devona Charley of Washington, D.C., delivered more than just letters and junk mail. The twenty-seven year old now-former U.S. Postal Service employee was sentenced to a year and a day in prison plus 6 months of home detention, part of three years of a supervised release plan imposed by a plea agreement on drug and bribery conspiracy charges.

A key polling result may trip the legal marijuana breakout.

A poll reported in the Washington Post on September 23 offers positive news for those troubled by the movement to legalize marijuana. It also does not augur well for those pushing more states to follow Colorado and Washington, where legalization is already underway.

While the New York Times continues to editorialize in favor of the legalization of marijuana (Wednesday's installment posits the federal ban is "rooted in myth and xenophobia"!), others are pushing back against legalizing the drug.

A leading drug policy researcher, David Murray, has a must-read piece up at the Hudson Institute website, "Comparing Marijuana and Alcohol: Seriously." Murray's article is a devastating deconstruction of claims that marijuana is relatively safe, or at least safer than alcohol. And, as he points out, it thereby undermines much of the basis of the New York Times's blithely irresponsible editorial endorsement of marijuana legalization.

President Obama visited Denver this week, was offered marijuana, and laughed. His administration made possible the open marketing and use of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state by directing that federal law not be enforced. The president is joined by Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul in supporting marijuana legalization. As Clinton recently told CNN, "On recreational marijuana, states are the laboratories of democracy.

'Do you want to hit this?'

President Obama was asked whether he wanted to smoke marijuana by a fellow patron of a Denver bar last night. The offer came from Instagram user manton89, who posted video of the ask on his Instagram account. "Asked him if he wanted a hit of pot...he laughed!" writes manton89 .

Watch here:

A voice can be heard asking President Obama, as he glad hands his way through the establishment: "Do you want to hit this?"

When asked during a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour last night whether she used drugs, Hillary Clinton was admirably firm. Had she done marijuana? “Absolutely not,” she replied. “I didn't do it when I was young, I'm not going to start now.” She is, however, more wavering when it comes to exposing other people’s children to the impact of drug use.

While she opposed marijuana decriminalization during her first presidential run in 2007, by 2014, following the enabling by the Obama administration of legal, recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington, candidate Clinton is now more receptive to a drug experience.

Can marijuana retailers survive the tort bar?

The legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has spawned reports of increased use, declining perception of risk, increased neonatal risk, drug tourism, diversion of public assistance to fund use, creation of significantly more powerful forms of the drug, and new financial rules to permit money from drug sales to enter the banking system. President Obama, moreover, proclaims marijuana use is no more dangerous than drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco—virtually assuring that the legalization of marijuana will be a defining domestic policy of his presidency.

Why won’t more political leaders speak out on marijuana?

The legalization of marijuana has acquired an aura of inevitability. But is there really no choice? Must Americans resign ourselves to the social acceptability, legal entrenchment, and widespread availability (including to our kids) of marijuana?

We are convinced this headlong rush into disaster can be stopped—if, that is, political leaders can be found who have the nerve to take on the conventional wisdom.

A study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that "[m]arijuana use makes tobacco use more pleasurable and may increase the user’s risk for becoming addicted to nicotine." Experiments involving rats found that those animals exposed to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, self-administered nicotine at higher rates than rats with no such exposure. This connection raises concern that pot may be a "gateway" drug to nicotine.